Part I: Hechingen”
I wrote about their tangential connection to my parents’ Holocaust experiences Monday and yesterday. Today and tomorrow I want to look at other aspects of our visits.
We took a regional train to the little town of Hechingen. The “station” was a trestle, high above the city. We stood there overlooking rooftops and steeples. “Where do we go?” asked Suzy. I pointed. “That’s where we have to go.” Now I had never been there before, however my mother and grandmother spent a lot of time in my childhood showing me photos of the town. Remember, we’re not talking about Berlin, but Hechingen wasn’t a hole-in-the-wall either. I just had this feeling that what I was looking at was, in fact, the right place.
But I digress. Getting back to the story…
There actually had been a song about that regional rail line. My parents had the record and I enjoyed listening to it as a child, not just for the story but for the unique dialect. There are so many distinct German dialects and in some cases a person from one city cannot understand someone from another city because they speak different dialects. And, as they say, no one can understand anyone speaking Swiss German! My father spoke one dialect and my mother another, but they weren’t that different. Nevertheless, they were certain phrases used that caused my father to laugh and make fun. His dialect was far more sophisticated than theirs (it was! Everyone agreed on that).
When I had a conversation in German with old friends of my grandparents (yes, friends, even though they weren’t Jewish), she began speaking Hochdeutsch, High German. I asked her to speak Schwaebisch (Swabian), the Hechingen dialect. She asked me, “But I thought you had learned Hochdeutsch in college?” I told her I had, yet “While I learned Hochdeutsch,” I said, “I speak Schwaebisch.” It’s like the King’s English and that of someone from Brooklyn, not that there’s anything wrong with Brooklyn.
Hechingen had more Jews than Gentiles in the twentieth century up until Kristalnacht and the subsequent tragedy. My grandfather had a thriving cigar business. There wasn’t one photo of him without a cigar in his mouth; he was a walking commercial for himself. My grandparents, mother and aunt lived in what would today be considered a mansion. In fact, when we went to the former homestead on our visit, we saw that four apartments had been created from the space. Truly it was very large and very beautiful.
In one of those apartments lived a dentist and her son. We had a nice conversation with her. Her young son came outside, and we were introduced as a “Jewish couple whose mother had once lived in this house.” The boy’s eyes widened. “Juden?” he asked. And then he said to his mother, “Can I bring them to school for show-and-tell?”
At one point an older couple walked past the dentist and us. She introduced us, “This is Isador and Carrie’s grandson, Peter and his wife, Suzy.” Everyone knew my grandfather; everyone knew he was Jewish; everyone knew what happened to the Juden of Deutschland. With a formal bow and a very, very flushed face, they took off. I wonder if the dentist noticed it, but Suzy and I surely had. Something similar happened next.
We had stayed in a pension run by Herr und Frau Glamser, a couple around the same age as my parents. Mrs. Glamser had been friendly with my mother. She was the hostess and he was the cook. I must say, until this day I’ve never tasted schnitzel as good as his.
As Suzy and I were going to our room for the night, I heard him say in German, “I didn’t know we let the Jews get to grow so tall!” They had a good laugh on our account. Suzy asked me what he had said, and when I translated, she said, “Get me the hell out of this place.” The next day we left for Munich…and in addition to Dachau, our couple of days in Munich were memorable as well.
(Speaking of nothing in particular, Max and Sadie were having dinner at the fanciest restaurant in town. While Max is eating his steak and chips, the waiter comes over to them and asks, “Is everything OK, sir?”
(No, that was another joke…” Is ANYthing ok?”). Max says, “Well, I asked for my steak to be rare, and it was well done.” The waiter replies, “Thank you, sir, we always aim to please.”)